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43 J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 7 (2018)
A Chinese Wall at the Nation's Borders: Justice Stephen Field and the Chinese Exclusion Case

handle is hein.journals/jspcth43 and id is 9 raw text is: A Chinese Wall at the Nation's Borders: Justice Stephen Field and The Chinese Exclusion Case POLLY J. PRICE In 1882, Congress passed the first of a series of acts to exclude Chinese laborers from the United States.' Known as The Chinese Exclusion Act,2 the popular title of the legislation also became the informal title of the ensuing constitutional challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the litigation officially came before the Court as Chae Chan Ping v. United States,3 Justice Stephen Field entitled it The Chinese Exclusion Case, no doubt drawn from the term used by the popular press, who followed the case as closely as any in its day. The name stuck. Indeed, to this day The Chinese Exclusion Case is the most common citation form for the momentous decision that set the parameters of legal debate over immigration for the next century and through the present. The Chinese Exclusion Case was the first of a series of cases in the early Progressive Era about Chinese immigration. With uncanny echoes of political discourse today, those following the case spoke of a deleterious effect on American workers, and argued the morality and constitutional per- missibility of banning an entire race, given that the United States had viewed itself to be a welcoming nation for all immigrants. Even whether a wall (and yes, the term Chinese wall was used) could stop the flow of illicit entry via land borders-from Canada primar- ily, but also by way of Mexico. The Chinese wall was mostly figurative, not literal, but it signified an increased demand for border guards and the rise of an administrative structure designed to enforce the terms of Chinese exclusion as set by Congress.4 The Court's unanimity in The Chinese Exclusion Case could lead the modem observer to overlook a highly contentious set of issues. Headlines from news articles bore remarkable similarity to recent division of opinion in America about immigration, including The Chinese Invasion: Alleged Violations of the Exclusion Law,5 Anti- Coolie Agitation,6 Still They Come: The

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